A flexVDI infrastructure uses an instance of flexVDI Manager to manage its resources and coordinate the actions of the all the components. This instance can be created and managed with the flexvdi-config tool. A single flexVDI Manager instance manages a full flexVDI cluster with several hosts. Therefore, we will perform the flexVDI manager installation only once during the installation of the first node of the cluster. The rest of the hosts only need to be registered with the manager; this step is explained later in the Administration Guide.

The "Manager" option in flexvdi-config shows a menu with the following options:

Ifyou do not haveInternet access,download the imagefrom theCustomerPortalin another computer and copy it to/var/tmpin theflexVDI Host. You can use the scpcommand for this task. Then selectLocal.

Ifafterdownloadingthe image usingtheRemoteoption,you canceltheinstallation, you canlaterselect theLocaloption to load the image from thedirectory where you previously downloaded it to avoidhaving todownload it again.

Installation parameters

The installation process will ask you a series of data to configure the instance of flexVDI Manager.

Planning the Manager's network configuration

The flexVDI Manager instance is a full virtual machine of its own. This means that you need to reserve a unique IP address for the Manager, different than the one you set for your host in the previous step. Usually, you assign IP addresses to hosts and the Manager in the same network segment, but they can live in different segments as long as they are able to reach each other. For instance, in the previous step we set the host's IP address to 10.111.9.4 as an example, and we will set the Manager's IP address to 10.111.9.12 here.

Instance number

In order to be able to uniquely identify each flexVDI Manager instance and the Guests managed by them, an integer from 0 to 99 known as instance number is used. If you plan to install multiple flexVDI Manager instances in the same corporate network, make sure you are using different instance numbers for each flexVDI Manager installation. The next step in the installation will ask you to introduce an instance number for this Manager.

Destination path

A flexVDI Manager instance requires approximately 10 GB of disk storage. By default, it is created on the directory /flexvdi/local, which is located on the root partition. If this location doesn't have enough space for the installation, you will need to specify an alternative path.

Network bridge

flexVDI Manager instance works as any other Guest, that's why it needs to be connected to a network bridge to access the corporate network. Select the virtual bridge virbr0 you created previously.

VLAN management

In the event that the flexVDI Manager will use a VLAN and it must tag its traffic (because the physical interface is connected to a port of a switch with 802.1q in trunk mode), you must specify the ID of the VLAN like this:

Network parameters

Enter the IP address, network mask and, optionally, the gateway address that this instance will use. Please remember these parameters cannot be the same as the ones configured for the Host.

Instance deployment

After completing the previous steps, a screen with a summary of all information entered will be displayed:

Please review the data, and choose YES if it is correct. Then, an automatic process will start to deploy your new instance. This process will take a few minutes, and can't be interrupted. After finishing, you'll be notified of its outcome.

You may see a warning message issued by the kernel saying something like "KVM: vcpu0 disabled perfctr wrmsr". Fear not, according to Red Hat you can safely ignore it.

Change the default password

After the installation of flexVDI Manager instance, it is highly recommended that you change the default password (flexvdi). To do this, follow these steps with the flexvdi-config tool:

Select Manageroption in the main menu.

Select Password.

Enter the current password for your instance of flexVDI Manager.

Enter your new password twice.

From now on, you must use your new password for all tasks that require connection to the instance of flexVDI Manager, both from flexVDI Config and from flexVDI Dashboard. flexVDI Config caches the password for the current session when you enter it for the first time, so that you do not have to write it again for each consecutive operation you perform with the flexVDI Manager.

Register the host with flexVDI Manager

Once the Host and the flexVDI Manager instance have been configured, you need to register the Hosts so that the flexVDI Manager can start managing its physical resources. This can be done with the flexVDI Config tool, following these steps.

Select Manager in the main menu.

Select Register.

If asked to, enter the password for the flexVDI Manager instance you just installed.

Finally, flexVDI Config will advise updating the SSH keys of the hosts connected to this instance of flexVDI Manager. Do it.